T Arts: Administration

DATE: 1934-1985

LEVEL: Series

Records of the Arts administration office are divided into: Administrators Reports 1934-1944; Arts Board; Refugees; Christopher Martin Memoranda; Christopher Martin Correspondence; Administrator's Reports 1945-1947; Administrator's Reports 1948-1954; Arts Administration Committee 1945-1954; A P Cox 1945; Staff; Teachers Training Course 1952-1954; General Arts Courses 1954-1961; Dartington Hall Arts Centre; Library; plus financial and other records.

One of the wartime functions of the Arts administrator was co-ordinating and reporting on Jewish refugee artists and performers such as the members of the Ballets Jooss; Kurt Jooss, Fritz Cohen, Sigurd Leeder, and artists and musicians including Hein Heckroth, Willi Soukop and Hans Oppenheim. This series contains considerable information on German refugees, and war time internment in 1940 and 1941.

The Arts Administration minutes and correspondence show arts activity across the estate, including music, theatre and arts policy; the Dartington Hall Film Unit (earlier known as the Cine Group), including film distribution throughout the south-west for the Ministry of Information; preliminary discussions for the Arts Enquiry, a fact-finding research project begun in 1941; early Summer School at Dartington; Children's Christmas Festival; dance movement and Rudolf Laban. There are records of the Dartington Hall Library. This series contains extensive correspondence between Leonard Elmhirst and Arts Administrators Christopher Martin and Peter Cox.

The Dartington Hall Arts Centre records contains reports and proposals for education and the arts, and cover the transition of the Arts Department to the Dartington Hall Arts Centre and its move towards establishing itself as an accredited educational institute. It includes records relating to discussions with the Ministry of Education on the proposed Scheme for Training Specialist Teachers of Music. Records relating to the Dartington String Quartet are also included.

The period of arts development at Dartington 1934-1940 was known as The Professional Phase.

The Dartington Hall Trustees required centralised control and co-ordination of arts activity on the estate, including budgetary control, and to this end the Arts Department was formally constituted on 1st April, 1934 with Christopher Martin appointed administrator. Its sole purpose was the administration and promotion of the arts. The Department was a Dartington Hall Trust responsibility and Martin was subject to the decisions of the Arts Board which met for the first time on May 11th, consisting of Leonard Elmhirst, Dorothy Elmhirst, W B Curry, E S Porter and Christopher Martin. .

Christopher Martin served for ten years as the administrator of the Arts Department. Following his death in 1944 he was succeeded by Peter Cox. Administratively, the Arts Department reported through the director of education, William B Curry, who was also headmaster of Dartington Hall School. Consequently there is Arts administrative correspondence in Curry's papers (T/DHS/B/20).

The period from 1940 was a transitional phase towards a predominantly educational institution that first became known as Dartington Hall Arts Centre, of which Peter Cox was Warden, then Dartington College and Arts Centre, and finally Dartington College of Arts with Peter Cox as its Principal until he retired in 1983.

(For more information see Victor Bonham-Carter's Report to the Trustees; Dartington Hall 1925-56 and his First Supplement to the Main Report 1956-65).

Information for Researchers

All papers belonging to The Dartington Hall Trust Archive (with the exclusion of Dartington Hall School pupils individual records) are held at the Devon Record Office. All enquiries relating to research should be made to Devon Records Office, Great Moor House, Bittern Road, Sowton, Exeter, Devon EX2 7NL
+44 (0)1392 384253
+44 (0)1392 384256
devrec@devon.gov.uk
www.devon.gov.uk/record_office

The following requests should be made direct to the Archives & Records at The Dartington Hall Trust as shown below:
Copies of images as seen on The Dartington Hall Trust online catalogue with appropriate reference number (Ref No.)
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Former pupils of Dartington Hall School wishing to view their records
Archives & Records
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Dartington Hall
Totnes TQ9 6EL
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This information is copyright The Dartington Hall Trust